OP: I consider Bitcoin's history thus far to be a vindication of my economic views, which are closely Austrian-aligned. That school does seem to have an outsize representation in the Bitcoin community, possibly because orthodox economists seem to consider Bitcoin 1) a Ponzi scheme, or 2) a doomed experiment due to a lack of indefinite growth in the money supply. I would be interested in hearing from an orthodox economist why he or she is interested in Bitcoin and why the happily-recovering, successfully stimulated global economy has use for some crazy new non-state video game money.
Really? Simply because it offers a low txn cost payment system based on public memory. Here are completely orthodox articles which support bitcoin as theoretically valuable.
Here is an article supporting the use of public memory as a payment system, i.e. the orthodox economic theory behind bitcoin is well-established.
http://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/sr/sr218.pdfHere is an article describing how a commodity with no intrinsic value can be adopted as money.
http://cas.umkc.edu/econ/economics/faculty/wray/631Wray/Kiyotaki%20and%20Wright.pdfOrthodox economists are simply ignoring bitcoin, not dismissing it. Economists who dismiss bitcoin are primarily Austrians. Look up their backgrounds.